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Christopher Columbus: An American Hero

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Christopher Columbus
Columbus was both a navigator and explorer, born in Genoa, Italy in 1451. He grew up as the son of a middle class weaver and as a teenager he first took an interest in seafaring life. As a young boy, he attended trading voyages between the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas. His first expedition to the Atlantic Ocean in 1476 was almost fatal. French privateers attacked the commercial fleet Columbus was traveling with and his ship burned down, leaving him to swim for his life. He washed up on a Portuguese shore and found his way to Lisbon. He furnished himself a niche there but eventually moved to Spain. He started his journies to gain information about the Atlantic currents and continued to seek faster trade routes across world …show more content…

We have formally celebrated his first voyage to the Americas on October 12th since 1937. It is engrained in our culture. We even named the land of our country’s capital as the ‘District of Columbia’, after the contributions Columbus made to the founding of the United States. Thanksgiving, a national American holiday, can also be alluded to Columbus’ accomplishments. It is also widely known that he not only tortured and enslaved the native population that was occupying the land he referred to as India but also never actually landed in the United States. This is a moral contradiction; Americans continue to show gratitude to a man who instituted genocide to pave a new destructive path to modern humanity, on the basis that he discovered our country. Although most people are unaware of the other aspects of Columbus’ life, they are equally appalling and important to his successes.
Despite his unethical decisions, Columbus’ contributions to the modern world are unparalleled by any other voyager. Although some believe this was due to luck, others feel it was due to the unwavering commitment Christopher Columbus had with redefining the Earth’s boundaries. Columbus changed the way we see the world, both literally and metaphorically, by discovering a western hemisphere, colonizing land, and connecting the Old World to the New

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